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This is not the typical post I use to write (which is usually about what I do at work, often related to GNOME, so if you’re not interested, just skip it…). But a couple of months ago I did something different that I still want to write about. That thing was a wooden box (sorry if you were expecting a Gavin Box) that I was asked to carve by my brother for his wedding, to be used for carrying the wedding rings.

The wedding had a Game of Thrones’s theme (there was not blood in it though, if you’re wondering), so naturally my brother wanted some of that in the box. Thus, my initial idea was to just buy a box and carve something to do with GoT and include their names. Something like this, as my brother sent me for inspiration.

However, upon ordering some box online, I noticed that not only was the box too small to carve (and the Targaryen’s dragon has a lot of details), it was also extremely poor quality: the wood was too light, the hinges were so loose they made clicking sounds just by moving the box. I also couldn’t find other boxes that seemed to fit my requirements online, so I resorted to building one myself.
When I was a kid, I loved to make stuff with wood, and I would use some spares from a local carpentry to build stuff like tiny houses, swords, crossbows, … So building a box shouldn’t be so difficult. I went and bought the wood, but the only issue actually was that I had only a handsaw… And cutting straight with a handsaw is not easy. So I had to borrow an electrical circular saw from my friend Chris, who also let me borrow a few other useful tools like clamps (thank you for that) which helped a lot when I glued the pieces together.

After I had the box glued together and the lid cut out, I felt it had some rough look but I liked that. So I proceeded with the carving. I put together the design I wanted on Inkscape and transferred it to the lid, then proceeded with the carving, using a nice tool set I bought online. I had never really carved anything worth before, so after a few rough beginnings I got it as I wanted. The letters were, as expected, extremely tricky, but I found the whole activity very zen. Since I work usually until a bit later in the evening, and we need to put the kids to bed, etc., on week days I’d just do a couple of letters after dinner, which would take me around one hour or so.
In the beginning I was going to carve only the design elements, but my artistic wife told me that maybe I should just carve the space between the elements too, and I am happy I listened to her. In the end, I decided to do these long carved waves all over the sides of the box too, and I am glad with the effect. The inside of the lid was also looking very flat (it was a single piece of wood), so I carved it in just for it too look more like a traditional box lid.

Like any decent software engineer, this project couldn’t go bug free. Turns out I made a mistake in the date, printing JUL instead of JUN… And I only noticed it after I had carved the L letter and realized that July would be after our flight back from Portugal (and moving the wedding to accommodate my error was inconvenient). So I had to fix it by making the L disappear and changing the date style (since there was no more space left).

The final steps were to add a closing mechanism (a hole to insert a small round magnet, to hold the lid and the bottom of the box together), paint it with a wood-special paint, and add the hinges (which was a bit challenging since I did it only using the carving tools and sandpaper).

Since the purpose was for it to carry the wedding rings, I bought some wine color fabric, stuffed it with whatever-the-stuffing-material-is-called, and added a couple of strings for tying the rings (unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it). The interior was not glued to the box, as I wanted it to be used after the wedding for whatever they want.

And that was it! It took me more than a month in total, but I am quite happy with the result and enjoyed the process a lot. Working with a computer all day, there’s something very relaxing about doing something more physical with one’s hands. So if your work and free time usually involve staring at a screen, and you feel like you could use an artistic hobby, I hope this post inspires you to do some wood carving.